Milkshake on rebuilt engine
 

got down to loto. Backed off the trailer and idled for about 10 min waiting on a buddy. Started towards our condo and 10 minutes into the ride noticed the oil psi was lower then normal. Was reading 40# at 3500 rpm (normally 65+). Came off plane and oil psi went to 20#. Shut down and lifted the hatch. Looks like a bomb went off. Oil everywhere. Milky oil. Started up and its pumping out the fuel pump vent tube. Motor is running fine but its dumping milkshake oil out the fuel pump vent tube. Its way up on the dipstick so its definitly getting water from somewhwere. I think its way to milky to be mixing with fuel


called my motor guy who said to bring it back but any ideas what could have happened?

This makes me sick to my stomach.

That is oil and water.

DO NOT RUN THE ENGINE
Something didn't get sealed properly

i had that happen on a used 454 back in the day... gave my customer a 502 (he was very happy) and had to rebuild the engine... but it was used !

looks like you are in the same boat but with an already rebuilt one ! that is worse than my case... gasket or cracked head or cracked block? i hope it is a simple fix for you...

Doubtful from launching it. It is possible to get water in sticking exhausts under, but it is on top of pistons and would hydrolock when cranking. Same with bad exhausts that started leaking. Was anything recently worked on? Intake gaskets will do this, but usually from being installed incorrectly. The water passage across front of intake could rot through and do this, but that is usually on old engines. But pulling intake is quickest, easiest, firstest thing to check.

As mentioned, intake gasket would be quickest and most likely. Head gasket would be next IMO.

Fixed an oil leak from a cracked filter adapter. Run the boat good on sunday with no issues. Figured everything was fine. Ran for a couple hours this past wknd. I would think a head gasket would cause a miss or run like chit.


Intake bolts are tight. Bottom of the motor is clean. Heads are new. Im hopeful its just an oil cooler or intake gasket or something easy but my luck has been pretty chitty lately.

Oil cooler. Possible. What is higher in oil cooler? Oil or water pressure. Cuz unless oil press was pretty much bled off to nothing, you would get pretty rainbows coming out exhaust with oil in the cooling water too. So unhook oil from oil cooler and hook lines together. Run engine-after replacing engine oil a couple of times. Is water coming out fittings where oil lines go? Bilge is already a superfund site. Just drain oil into bilge and out the drain plug-on trailer of course. You suck oil out and refill, there will much more left behind and will take many more drain-refills to clean up. No Mobil one here. Walmart oil. Dollar store oil. Sh!t-waste oil. It is only gonna run 5 min at idle then get dumped again. Oh yeah. Only enough to get oil pressure at idle. 2-3 quarts at a time should do it.

Ok, c​​​​​​​racked filter adapter. Other end of one of those hoses goes to cooler. Possible you could have stressed the cooler pulling on hose while changing. Each possibility is extremely unlikely and a stretch, but one of em is the guilty party. Those new heads just became suspects too...

There where issues the 1st and only run last year too.
http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/g...ml#post4505766


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I'm bringing that up for several reasons:
1) So everyone knows
2) Who ever is at fault, the engine builder, the parts manufacturers, or you...should own up to it. You will not know till it comes apart and things looked at.
3) I mistakenly forgot I put a tstat in a crossover system without a bypass (your bypass was limited) by the time I brought the engine to a dyno. A few break in runs later the engine was milkshaked. Put a ater psigauge on it for a quick stab of the throttle on the syno and water psi pegged a 60psi gauge. Water pushed passed the gaskets and thus the milkshake. Fuk !

You drained water but did you run antifreeze thru it in case shop lost heat for a night or day or etc so it wouldn't freeze ?

Coolant hose kinked.....exhaust could have heated too much and cracked.....letting water into engine. Or engine or heads got hot and squeezed a headgasket ?

Again, no guessing will help. Wait till it comes apart and be honest with the builder.

to bad the like button is gone,now i just hit the quote button and mutter useless chit.

You can pressure test this engine in place. Plug the raw water in hose and 1 exit to exhausts. Put pressure Guage and tubeless tire valve stem into other exhaust exit. It'll probly take a couple trys to get hoses sealed. Put 30 lbs pressure into water passages. Crossover? Good. No worries about blowing out water pump seal. How long does pressure hold? I would still do intake and elim oil cooler first and see if you get lucky. That twisted up water in hose makes possibility of oil cooler mistreatment that much higher. Let's not rip engine out and run to builder with it til we have eliminated the easy stuff...

SB thinking clearly though the fog. Shows there can be many ways to get milkshake.
But if the rest of the engine has been checked over OP could be good.

Thanks. The manifolds were suspect last year but i would guess they are fine. If they were allowing that much water in i would imagine it would have hydro locked by now?

I guess i can have em tested but i am pretty sure the manifolds are not my issue. The pieces inside appear to be old fittings the best i can tell. No clue how they got there.

A d for the record i will fully own my chit if this is something i did. My builder is a good guy and will stand behind it if its something he did. If its something i did i will take the lumps. Its not my style to screw someone over


thermostat is the only thing i have messed with. I did trying running last weekend without one to see if i could get it alittle cooler. (Oil got to 225, water to 180 first time out). Without the tstat it didnt warm up at all. Drilled a couple small holes in the thermostat and put it back in. I checked the oil after last weekend and it was fine.

Could that have caused this? ive never seen more then 15# of water psi at WOT.

also cracking do to cold weather is not a possibility. 1 my shop is heated/cooled year round. Im out there everyday. 2. Boat has been used twice before yesterday. 1st time this year i noticed an oil leak and discovered the filter adapter cracked, which i replaced (plugged the bypass).

I did remove 1 oil line from the oil cooler so that is possibilty that i someone distrubed something but i know the lines are routed correctly and are sealed.

I started this thread not to place blame but more merely to figure out what could have happened. This isnt my first rodeo with milkshakes. My last velocity had to much water psi and pused an intake gasket, but it never projectile vomited milkshake all over the bilge either.

Frustrating to say the least. Last summer sucked for boating and this summer isnt starting out real good.

So something failed. It could be oil cooler that got tweaked. But it is copper. Won't be corrosion. And tweakin a connector nipple is reaching for the moon. But taking the 2 oil lines off and connecting them together absolutely eliminates the oil cooler. Then pull the intake, carefully. This is not gasket replacement. This is an autopsy. You want to see if there is any evidence of water coming from any of the 4 corners of the head. And look over the bottom of the intake water passage. Just cuz it is a fairly new intake doesn't mean there wasn't a thin spot in the casting that coulda let go. We want pics of the intake gaskets still in place immediately after pulling manifolds.

Just did a bit of rereading. Pumping out fuel pump vent tube. I assume this is a block mounted fuel pump? Not the raw pump mounted fuel pump, which isn't connected to crankcase at all?

Intake gasket is most likely source of enough water to raise oil level in such short time

Im hoping its just an intake since its running so good.

The fuel pump is mounted to the block, not the raw water pump. Im gonna clean the mess up sunday when we get home then take the boat to my guy for him to see/hear. I just want him to give me his opinnon.

^^^Like^^^

lol

like

I hope you're right.

Just a quick update. I got home from loto yesterday afternoon and finally got the motor cleaned up. Its not perfect but i can at least work on it without get oil every where. It was a f'n mess!

i drained the oil and was surprised there was very little oil left in the motor.
Checked intake bolts....all were tight.

Plan tonight is to pressurize the cooling side of the motor but im sure its gonna fail. From there im gonna try to narrow it down by verifying the oil cooler is good.

Stil hoping the motor isnt hurt to bad. Was still running fine and 40# of oil psi when shut down. Hasnt been started since. Again this all happened with in 10 minutes at 3000-3800 rpms.

The holley mechanical fuel pump is the only source i can find of the blowing milky oil out. It came from the vent tube and guessing at higher rpms it was shooting it out vs the 800 rpms i saw it spitting at idle.

Is it safe to assume the fuel pump is toast? Can theses be rebuilt? Im still paying off the last rebuild so money is tight. Ive talked to my builder and he is going to listen/check it out and give me his opinnon as well. Im scratching my head trying to figure out if there is anything i could have done to cause this?

I think the oil level climbed until the fuel pump drive was underwater (oil?) pump probably ok. stop tightening the intake bolts and take them off...also, with a crossover, you can put it on 1 side of block with other end hanging in space. then bolt s small pieces of wood or steel over intake water ports in head and pressure test 1 side at a time. so if whole engine fails, which I hope it does (otherwise there is nothing wrong and this milkshake is a figment of your imagination) you can pressure test 1 side, then the other to see which head or gasket is the problem. water-oil mix is not a very good lubricant. but it is still a lubricant. odds are your bottom end survived.

Pulled the main water hose from the cooler to the cross over and plugged it. Plugged both water lines from the crossover to each exhaust manifold as well. I removed the fitting for the water temp sensor and installed a hosebarb fitting there. I can not pump up any pressure at all, none. I figured id at least get something that would bleed off fairly quick. Am i doing something wrong?

besides trying to pressure test something that won't hold pressure? what do you mean pump? like with a bicycle pump? you need compressed air. not to see pressure, but to hear where it is blowing out.

I rented one of the radiator testers. Yea its basically a bicycle pump with a gauge. Its how i tested my last engine that milkshaked.

You saying i should use compressed air through it? I dont have a regulator on my compressor so running 100# of air psi.

Don't worry. It ain't gonna hold 5 psi. Let alone 100. The rig I built has a tubeless tire valve and a pressure gauge in it. I clamped it to the small hose in the center of the bypass. Using it to try to fix a cracked 502 I bought cheap. You could go buy a pressure gauge from welding supply or pool place. Get an adapter and screw it into a temp gauge fitting. But I think blow air in. Listen for where it comes out. And get the intake off. There is nothing you are gonna hurt with 50 psi. The draw pumps usually run 30 anyway. Shut compressor off when you have 50 on the gauge. You don't wanna try to hear over a compressor running anyway.

You said that there was almost no oil in the engine. Sounds to me like you got a lot of water in the engine and when the oil went above 212* it boiled out of every point available including the dip stick - that is why the engine was almost empty.

Does the engine have the correct Intake Gaskets, I am guessing one failed and dumped lots of water fast into the oil pan,, I had it happen 3 years ago, the engine builder used Gen.6 gaskets in my Mark 4 engines ,,very easy to see when intake was removed.

Called it a night. Put compressed air to it. Hard to say but kinda sounded like Air hissing in the valley.

Also pulled all the plugs, all 8 looked fine to me. No noticable difference in any of them.

There is still oil/water in the pan. Its just not draining through the hose. Ill try tomorrow to remove the hose from the pan but not sure i can reach it

my builder called and is going to try to stop by tomorrow. I havnt yanked the intake yet in case he wanted to try to run the motor

couple side notes for what its worth.

motor has less then 4 hrs run time
oil temp has never gone over 220 (150 in the 10 minute run this happened)
water temp never over 190 (130 when this happened)
water psi never over 15#
40# oil psi when shut down
brand new pro max heads
there is absolutley no way this has a crack from heat or from freeze, im confindent in that

ill keep digging tomorrow. Fearing yhe worst but still hoping for the best

ive suspected intake gaskets all along. I know it has new promaxx heads and block is gen 4 bow tie block.

When this happened to 253's engine, he shut it down in time, but just barely. the bearings were starting to stick to the crank and I had to polish it. It doesn't take long with no lube. also, I spent hours cleaning the gelled sludge out of every recess of the engine. There is NO WAY you will clear it up by doing multiple oil changes. It would take 1000 of them. Do yourself a favor and tear it completely apart and clean it up, fix whatever went wrong, and save your summer.

At this point i just want to know what went wrong and why. If the builder doesnt stand behind it im done for the summer anyway.

Your ,Oil Coolers , Oil Pan,, & Oil Pump are now plugged with the thick ,cold slimy sludge, like Joe said it must be taken apart to clean everything.
I do not recommend adding new oil and starting that engine,,,,,it may/ will damage it badly.
It took me 2 days to get the heavy sticky sludge totally out of my engine bay area.
May as well get started fast to save some of the summer.
Good Luck

I agree. I just feel sick about this. I have less then 4 hrs on this motor.

Im teying to stay upbeat but im so sick of this thing im ready to be done with it

ill update later when i know for sure what i am dealing with

Hoping for a good outcome for you.

Padraig

Sorry to hear about the problems...frustrating- having been there myself a few times.
Any water in the cylinders? Cranking with the plugs out and watching for vapor/water may help identify if a leaky head gasket or exhaust manifold with leak into one of the cylinders. My experience with past failures is water from water intrusion would still be in the pan (ie 7qts)- a head gasket/head leak may pressurize the oil system and blow oil out of dipstick tube or in your case fuel pump vent- just an idea..
If water in cylinder a bit of diesel will displace the water and set on top of the rings with water floating on top- don't spill it in the bildge as then you'll have a mess that also stinks!
I've lost two engines after re-build due to cracked valley (SBC)- retorquing the head bolts is just too much stress for a thin valley resulting from cost out measures (reduced iron/weight depending on year) and some core shift- don't seem to hear of that for BBC.

Lane